Denver City Councilwoman Jeanne Faatz once outmugged a mugger.
So it should come as no surprise that the feisty lone Republican on the Denver City Council has been an irritant for Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper.
Over the past month, Faatz, who represents southwest Denver, has challenged Hickenlooper to boost his plans to hire and train new police officers next year.
Her stance ensures that she will play a major role tonight when the City Council holds a public hearing on the mayor’s proposed 2006 budget.
Those who know her say Hickenlooper shouldn’t underestimate her.
“She is tenacious,” said Jeff Shoemaker, a fellow Republican who was a member of the state legislature with Faatz in the 1990s.
Faatz, 64, acknowledged she has a contrarian streak.
“There is probably a mischievous glint in my eyes at times,” she said recently.
Shoemaker recalled that when he served in the legislature with Faatz she refused to buckle to the Republican leadership’s push for subsidies to attract an airline. She lost that fight. But she won others.
Many thought she was crazy when she first pushed state legislation that would allow parents to choose their child’s school. She eventually passed that legislation, and now school choice is seen as a fundamental right in Colorado.
In the legislature, Faatz was in the majority. At City Council, she’s the only Republican. She has a reputation for casting plenty of single no votes at the council table. She was the only council member to buck Hickenlooper’s homeless plan, voting against it when the council passed a resolution of support.
“The bottom line is I believe the positions I’ve advocated are in line with the constituency that elected me,” Faatz said.
During recent budget meetings, officials in the Hickenlooper administration have practically rolled their eyes at her, wondering how she decided the authorized strength of the police force should be 1,492. Hickenlooper wants to make it 1,427.
Hickenlooper plans to hire and train 137 new officers. Faatz points out that with retirements and reduced overtime, the number of officers the mayor actually would add to the streets would be about 22. Councilman Rick Garcia also wants more police officers, though not as many as Faatz.
“A lot of what she says is very thought provoking,” said Councilwoman Jeanne Robb.
“I don’t think there’s anyone on the council who doesn’t want more police,” Robb said. “The question is at what point do the trade-offs stop.”
Faatz’s district in southwest Denver is more conservative than the rest of Denver. Faatz said she’s heard her district, where she’s lived for the past 37 years, referred to as a blue ghetto because so many police officers live there.
Former Democratic state legislator Peggy Kerns said that when Faatz tried to jump to the Senate, the Republican leaders wanted her to run a negative campaign against her Democrat opponent, Pat Pascoe.
“She absolutely laid down the law and said, ‘I will not run a negative campaign,”‘ Kerns said. “She lost, but she had her integrity left.”
Faatz exhibited that same stubbornness one night in the early 1990s when a mugger confronted her in the parking lot of a hospital. The mugger grabbed her purse, but Faatz gripped hard, too. “Finally, I trip him up, and he falls down, and we’re literally lying on the ground eyeball to eyeball, and he gets up and runs off,” Faatz recalled.
During one recent council committee meeting, Faatz went eye-to-eye with Hickenlooper’s acting chief of staff, Cole Finegan.
Finegan had just told Faatz that if she wants more police officers, it’s up to her to find offsetting cuts from the $375.16 million public safety budget because public safety takes more than 48 percent of the overall city budget.
“Not on your life,” Faatz shot back, saying she viewed public safety as sacrosanct.
She told Finegan she saw two of the mayor’s top initiatives as potential targets. She said she had doubts about the mayor’s plan to give city employees bonuses rather than automatic cost-of-living increases and his plans for a new call center that will allow residents to dial one phone number to access any city service.
“You’ve made priority judgments as well, none of which is where I would target the money,” Faatz said, staring Finegan in the eye.
Staff writer Christopher N. Osher can be reached at 303-820-1747 or at cosher@denverpost.com.
Jeanne Faatz
Career: Denver city councilwoman, former state legislator and former educator
Political Party: Republican
Neighborhood: Harvey Park
Family: Two daughters, Susan Henderson and Kristin DuMond, and five grandchildren
Education: Bachelor’s in English from the University of Illinois and a master’s of arts in communications from the University of Colorado at Denver
Hobbies: Walking, exercising on the treadmill and reading mysteries, especially those written by Michael Crichton and Robin Cook
